The question is not whether girls should lead. It is whether parents are being told what kind of political formation is taking place in their children’s schools.
When we were children, many of us heard the same warning: do not go anywhere with a stranger who offers you candy.
It was never a very complete picture of danger. Most children are not abducted by strangers. Yet the story carried a truth that parents understood: children are impressionable. They can be attracted by something pleasant, familiar, or seemingly harmless without seeing where it may lead.
And yes, they can be drawn to a message that relieves them of responsibility and explains their difficulties as the fault of the opposite sex. In that sense, the feminist message can be its own kind of candy.
I have been looking at feminist organizations that establish clubs and leadership programs for girls and young people. At first I wondered whether there was evidence of an effort to introduce girls to feminism early and bring them into activism. The answer to that questions is yes—but the organizations’ own public materials tell a more specific story than the caricature: they introduce young people to feminist ideas and train them to advocate for particular political causes.
What I found was an organized pathway. It begins in middle and high school. It teaches students a particular way of understanding social problems. Then it gives them training and tools to advocate politically for the causes selected by the organization. A small portion of those tools, often called Guidebooks, is available to the public. The largest portion of their material is withheld. Do you think they might be hiding something?
So it can be framed as public youth activism. But it is not politically neutral. The publicly available material makes it clear that their objectives are to train activists to fight for the feminist cause.
Middle-school girls are at an age when belonging, identity, and moral purpose matter deeply. They are not empty vessels, but they are still forming ideas about who they are, whom they should trust, and how to interpret unfairness. That is why parents should take seriously any program that combines friendship and leadership with a particular political worldview.
Let’s have a look at some of these programs.
Girls Learn International: a pathway, not merely a club
Girls Learn International (GLI), a program of the Feminist Majority Foundation, reports more than 160 clubs in 26 states and 18 countries. Its clubs are for middle- and high-school students, and GLI says they operate in public and private schools as well as community settings. Its own description says that it is building “a movement of informed advocates and a new generation of leaders and activists for social change.”
The organization provides an online Guidebook with more than fifty meeting guides. The public catalog includes titles such as “Allyship in Action,” “In Her Shoes,” “Representing Girlhood,” and “Rethinking the Language We Use.” The detailed lessons require a club login, so we really don’t know what is behind that door.
But GLI is very clear about the larger program. Students meet regularly to learn about human rights and gender equity, then are expected to undertake advocacy or fundraising projects. The stated issues include reproductive rights, comprehensive sex education, the Equal Rights Amendment, LGBTQIA+ rights, racial justice, environmental justice, civic engagement, and menstrual equity. There are trainings, a summer activist program, conferences, internships, United Nations opportunities, and a bridge into the organization’s college-level feminist network.
Again, none of this is hidden. The point is not that the group is concealing its goals. The point is that parents may see the word club or leadership and not recognize that the program is also a pipeline into a defined political movement.
NOW is even more explicit
The National Organization for Women’s Campus Action Network offers materials for middle- and high-school students as well as college students. One public activity list gives us a much clearer view of what “young feminist” organizing looks like.
Students are invited to do an “Education Privilege Walk.” They line up, step forward or backward in response to statements about family education, race, language, disability, income, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and safety. When the walk ends, the students who have moved furthest forward—those treated by the exercise as having the greatest privilege—compete for two candy bars. The discussion then asks whether the competition was fair and what “gaps in privilege” need to be bridged.
There is nothing illegitimate about discussing unequal circumstances. Young people should understand that some classmates face burdens others do not.
But the exercise does more than encourage empathy. It gives students a framework: social outcomes are understood through privilege, group identity, and unequal power. That is a political lens. It is not the only lens through which children can be taught to understand the world.
The next activity makes the framework explicit. Each student receives a card naming an “intersectional feminist issue” and is asked to discuss how they would solve it. The approved issue list includes ending the wage gap, abortion access, keeping Planned Parenthood open, ratifying the ERA, comprehensive sex education, transgender military service, immigration policy, and other causes. The same document recommends documentaries such as She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, Seeing Allred, The Hunting Ground, and Birthright: A War Story.
Those films and causes do not represent every reasonable view of sex, family, women, men, violence, education, or public policy. They represent a particular worldview. The clubs then give students practice in fundraising, campus organizing, publicity, and political action.
It is hard to honestly describe this as merely encouraging girls to “find their voice.” It is training young people to use a feminist voice in public life.
Other organizations say the same thing in different language
GLI and NOW are not unusual.
Girl Up, a program launched by the United Nations Foundation, calls advocacy its tool for “social, political, and economic change.” It supplies clubs with advocacy resources around gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, menstrual equity, education, and other issues. It reports thousands of clubs worldwide.
Advocates for Youth publishes a 64-page Youth Activist Toolkit. It teaches young people how to define a problem, identify “constituents” and allies, analyze decision-makers, build collective power, shape a public narrative, and run campaigns. Its examples include reproductive justice and ending stigma around abortion.
Girls for Gender Equity is more candid still. In a public program model, it says its work is grounded in Black feminist pedagogy, intersectionality, social justice, and an anti-oppression analysis. It recruited young women and gender-nonconforming youth to develop policy recommendations for New York City around education, health, anti-violence work, criminal justice, and other systems. One may agree with its aims. But no parent should mistake the program for neutral civic education.
I suppose these organizations might provide some value to girls. They might encourage confidence, public speaking, friendship, service, and attention to real hardships.
But those benefits do not erase the political purpose. Leadership is not neutral when the organization chooses the causes, the interpretive lens, the reading and viewing lists, the vocabulary, and the campaigns.
What about boys?
There are programs for boys. I found groups such as A Call to Men, Coaching Boys Into Men, Equimundo, and MenEngage. They often teach boys about consent, relationship behavior, violence prevention, “healthy masculinity,” and being allies in gender equality.
Some of that work may be useful.
Yet there is a striking difference in emphasis. Girls’ programs are often organized around girls’ leadership, girls’ rights, girls’ voices, and girls’ advocacy. Boys’ programs more often begin with what boys must not become: violent, sexist, dominating, unsafe, or emotionally closed. They are frequently asked to become allies to a movement built around others’ needs.
I have not found a comparably large and well-developed network of school clubs that begins with this message: boys and men have inherent dignity; their struggles matter; their gifts matter; their health, education, fatherhood, and safety deserve attention; and they can organize to address the places where boys and men are doing badly.
That absence is worth noticing.
The question parents should ask
The point is not to pull girls out of every club, or to frighten parents with exaggerated claims. It is to ask the same questions we should ask of any organization seeking access to children.
What is this group teaching? What assumptions does it make about men and women? Which social problems does it emphasize, and which ones does it ignore? What films, readings, slogans, and activities shape the young girl’s understanding of men, women, and social problems? Is the purpose service, discussion, leadership, political advocacy—or all of the above?
And perhaps most importantly: are parents told the answer plainly?
Both boys and girls should be encouraged to think, lead, speak, and act. But neither should be quietly handed a ready-made ideological map and told that it is simply compassion, empowerment, or equality.
Children deserve to learn how to think before they are trained to become advocates for someone else’s conclusions.
A word about the money
The funding picture is large, even though the precise youth-program share is difficult to isolate. Public Form 990 filings show that the Feminist Majority Foundation reported roughly $8 million in revenue in its most recent filing, while Girls for Gender Equity reported roughly $3 million. The United Nations Foundation—the parent organization of Girl Up—reported about $77 million in revenue. Those three organizations alone represent nearly $90 million in annual organizational revenue.
That is not a claim that $90 million is spent on girls’ clubs. It is not. The United Nations Foundation supports many projects besides Girl Up, and the Feminist Majority Foundation does much more than Girls Learn International. The other organizations discussed here have separate budgets as well. No honest person can turn their parent organizations’ full revenue into a dollar figure for youth feminist advocacy. But the responsible conclusion is still clear: this is not a shoestring effort. It is a well-funded ecosystem with national and international reach, professional staff, curricula, conferences, networks, and access to schools and public institutions.
Imagine if even a small portion of that kind of sustained support were devoted to boys. Not to telling them they are dangerous or defective, and not to making them auxiliary members of someone else’s movement. Imagine school clubs, mentors, and materials that told boys that masculinity is honorable; that courage, responsibility, protection, competence, and leadership are gifts to be developed; that boys’ pain and losses matter; and that they have inherent value simply as human beings. Imagine a generation of boys being invited to lead from strength and purpose rather than being taught, first of all, to apologize for who they are.
